Innovator Stories: The Energy Catalyst Accelerator
Overview
Through financial and advisory support, and by building strategic partnerships and uncovering new insights, Energy Catalyst supports the development of technologies and business models that can improve lives in Africa, Asia and Indo-Pacific regions. Energy Catalyst is an Innovate UK programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) under the Ayrton Fund, part of the UK’s International Climate Finance commitment. FCDO funding is part of the scale-up of the FCDO’s Transforming Energy Access platform announced at COP26 in Glasgow.
The Challenge
Despite significant progress in recent years, particularly on access to electricity, we are not on track to meet Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) to deliver universal access to energy by 2030. Without sustained efforts, some 660 million people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, will still be left without access to electricity in 2030 and 1.9 billion people will remain without access to clean cooking. This affects all development goals, not just SDG7 as poor access to energy jeopardises healthcare and education provisions, quality of life, gender equity, livelihoods, and much more.
Energy Catalyst addresses this challenge by:
Acting as a springboard for innovators to de-risk, accelerate and demonstrate their clean energy solutions
Building partnerships across the energy access ecosystem to maximise the potential for commercialising new technologies and business models
Supporting innovators to create new economic opportunities and improve lives in Africa and Asia
Embedding and promoting the principles of gender equality and social inclusion to enhance commercial sustainability and maximise societal impact
Straw Innovations: Enhanced Rice Straw Biogas
Eigen has provided long term mentoring and coaching plus peer-peer ‘Scaleup’ and business planning workshops. Specific Eigen tasks advised on corporate and capital structuring and the investor term sheet. Eigen coordinated market analysis & launch support, financial model review and techno-economic analysis.
Bramble: Low cost printed circuit board fuel cells
Eigen provided expert mentoring over a two year period and scoped and co-ordinated specific help in market segmentation and route to market, determining priority use cases and then market sizing and route to market options.
LiNa Energy: Sodium metal chloride batteries
Eigen provided long term mentoring and coaching and coordinated support in segmenting their market, identifying early adopter customers and modelling embedded carbon in their innovative battery product.
Pilio: Sustainability Insetting
In addition to long term mentoring and coaching, Eigen delivered specific support behind investment transactions and partnership negotiations. Eigen also shaped and coordinated support behind financial modelling, pitch deck development, market analysis and partner identification.
Catagen: Low carbon fuels
Over a 2-year period Eigen helped this hydrogen technology SME broaden its market focus to include Sustainable Aviation Fuel rather than just e-Gasoline/e-Diesel. Business development support enabled valuable introductions to DAC companies, one of which became a project partner. Further partners were identified in the cement and zero-emission bus sectors. Eigen also evaluated the market for a novel hydrogen compressor developed by the SME. This package of support led to commercialisation of its hydrogen compressor and a partnership with an oil major and an airline to develop a decentralised SAF business.